Utilize Audio Books

I’ll be talking more about how we use audio books later in this series. They’ve been an amazing resource for my children.

By listening to audio books in the car, at dinner or even at bedtime, we expose our boys to stories while they’re a captive audience.

Don’t Overlook Technology

We’ve utilized e-readers like Kindles, the Kindle app on my iPad, and the Nook. The boys also love watching Online Storytime on Barnes & Noble – they have some of our favorite books, read by the author or fun celebrities.

Make Reading Active

It took a long time for me to get over the idea that the boys weren’t hard wired to sit completely still while listening to me read.

I’ve learned to let the boys burn off their energy during storytime. They’ve jumped on a mini-trampoline, played with Play-Dough, and splashed in the bathtub while listening to me read.

Have Male Reading Role Models

I’m blessed that my husband loves to read, and he loves to read to our children. Over the years, he’s picked up much of the slack of nightly storytimes. The boys love it, and it offers them some one on one time with their dad.

Adelien – The nonfiction preference is SO normal that the Common Core is now utilizing it like crazy in the younger grades for both reading and writing curricula. My kids are about 50/50 with their preference for story v. factual books.

My twin boys love non-fiction, especially almanacs, books of records, etc. and books about space, dinosaurs, biology, nature. They only really fiction if it is “boy funny”. Often the giggling makes them join each other reading the same book.

I think they would work for girls too — my girls have been very different than my boys. They would sit pretty quietly in my lap and listen to me read, while the boys would climb over me, grab the book out of my hands and hit each other with it. AACK!

Reading with boys certainly has its challenges. Thanks for the great tips!
Thank you for stopping by the Thoughtful Spot Weekly Blog Hop this week. We hope to see you drop by our neck of the woods next week!

Thanks for linking up! We have three boys and I’m going to try out some suggestions- they just have a hard time sitting still since they are definitely all boy! Mine love adventure stories and we usually will read a chapter at a time and so they get to practice their recall, but this is still harder for the 6 year old and 3 year old, although my 9 year old loves it. I’m going to go get some of those David Shannon books- sounds so good!
-S.L. Payne, uncommongrace.net